Malé Latin

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

Toward the mid-1970s, during President Ibrahim Nasir's tenure, teleprinters were introduced to the local administration. The new telex equipment was viewed as a great progress, yet the local Thaana script was deemed to be an obstacle because messages on the machines could be written only in the Latin script. Following this, a Latin transliteration was approved by the Maldivian government in 1976 and was quickly implemented by the administration. Booklets were printed and dispatched to all atoll and island offices, as well as schools and merchant liners.^{[citation needed]}

This official Latin script has been criticized by several scholars because the transliteration of vowels did not follow the consistency of the Thaana alphabet and was more difficult to master for Maldivian learners.^[1] In the Maldivian alphabet there is one single diacritical sign (fili) for 'a' 'e' 'i' and 'u', and this single sign is repeated when the sound is lengthened. In the new romanization only one of the short vowels is consistent with the way of the traditional script "aa", but most long vowels "oo", "ee", "ey" and "oa" are pronounced as in English.^[2]

Anthropologist Clarence Maloney notes that the use of th and dh to represent unaspirated dental consonants but lh for retroflex l is confusing and misleading, as in IAST, the most common transcription method for Indic languages, the first two would be read as aspirated consonants and the latter, which is instead a retroflex, as an aspirated "l".^[3]

The new romanization also used aberrant combinations of letters and apostrophes for some Arabic sounds, effectively ignoring the Arabic transliterations accepted in academic circles worldwide.^[4]

The Thaana script was reinstated by President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom shortly after he took power in 1978.

Note: Some Arabic sounds were written as they are pronounced by Maldivians, and they are shown in curly brackets in this table.

Being able to master and combine both Arabic and Thaana was a prerequisite to be a Katību, Mudimu or Atoll chief. The weekly Friday prayer sermon was sent by the government to every inhabited island, and it was written in both scripts, because it contained texts both in Arabic and Maldivian languages.

Even other documents of the time, like private letters, astrological writings or storybooks contained texts, in which both scripts were present, because not only quotations from Islamic religious texts, but also certain loanwords of Arabic origin (for example the local words for "special", "rule", "important", "declaration", and "service" among others) were written in the Arabic script.^[8]

• Romanization of Maldivian
• Dhivehi writing systems